Sally O'Neill, Active Pictou County coordinator and Trecia Schell, vice president of Atlantic Provinces Library Association with Grace MacLean. O'Neill and Schell were among those present at the 2019 Wellness Fund Celebrations. $41,000 dollars were given out to 18 projects in Pictou County for work in developing health and wellness in the region. - Brendan Ahern

STELLARTON, N.S. —

A total of $41,000 dollars was handed out to 18 different wellness organizations in Pictou County on Feb. 20 and recipients are excited to put it to good use.

The 2019 Wellness Fund Celebration was hosted at the Stellarton Fire Hall.

The money will go towards projects in that are aimed at improving health and wellness in the county as well as helping them to build stronger partnerships between organizations with health and wellness promotion as their mandate.

“The more partnerships that we make in our community, the more that we’re going to be able to do,” said Active Pictou County coordinator, Sally O’Neill. “Many hands make light work.”

Two of the collaborative projects which O’Neill is currently involved, as well as an Active Pictou County initiative called an Active Transportation Framework, were all recognized at Wednesday’s event.

The Active Transportation Framework is a kind of bureaucratic tool-kit to help municipal employees in recreation departments and public works to locate sources of grant funding, match it with potential projects, and then apply for that funding under a tight deadline.

“It would definitely have an impact on improving our ability to be able to source funding” said Paul Corbin, Stellarton director of community development and recreation. “Some funding windows will open up and it’s a matter of finding the project that best fits that opportunity. So, it’s a bit of a rush job to get your ducks in a row to see if you qualify.”

As for the Fun Fit Pass program, the extra funding afforded by Wednesday’s recognition will be given over to purchasing more of the library’s loanable family gym passes.

“From the day that we started it there were people waiting to borrow it,” said Trecia Schell, vice-president of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association.

The Fun Fit Pass program, which started last December, loans-out family passes to The Pictou County Wellness Centre, the Pictou Fisheries Training Pool, and True Potential Fitness in the town of Pictou, all for up to two weeks.

“The whole idea is to make it easier for people to be active,” said O’Neill. “So, if that means getting an opportunity that you otherwise might not have been able to afford, then that’s amazing.”

“The waitlists or hold requests for the passes are three-to-six weeks with the current numbers that we have,” said Schell. “Having additional passes for people to borrow will bring that down so that when people request them they can go to the gym with the kids within a week or two instead of months later.”

The expansion of the program is also crossing county lines, with the Antigonish, People’s Place Library set to offer passes to the recreation facilities at Saint Francis Xavier University.

Full details on the after-school learn to dance program are yet to be announced, but O’Neill said that it will be for students in grades seven-nine and that it will run for eight weeks.